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Xmen (2000)

• Director Bryan Singer
  • Bohemian Rphasody
  • Xmen Apocalypse
  • Days of Future Past
  • Xmen United
  • Art Pupil
  • Usual Suspects
• Starring Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, James Mardsen, and Anna Paquin.
• Budget of 75 million and box office of 296 million
• Trivia
  • Marvel Comics writers and chief editors Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas wrote an X-Men screenplay in 1984 when Orion Pictures held an option on the film rights, but development stalled when Orion began facing financial troubles. Throughout 1989 and 1990, Stan Lee and Chris Claremont were in discussions with Carolco Pictures for an X-Men film adaptation, with James Cameron as producer and Kathryn Bigelow directing.
  • A story treatment was written by Bigelow, with Bob Hoskins being considered for Wolverine and Angela Bassett as Storm. The deal fell apart when Stan Lee piqued Cameron’s interest in a Spider-Man film, Carolco went bankrupt, and the film rights reverted to Marvel. In December 1992, Marvel discussed selling the property to Columbia Pictures to no avail. Meanwhile, Avi Arad produced the animated X-Men television series for Fox Kids. 20th Century Fox was impressed by the success of the television series, and producer Lauren Shuler Donner purchased the film rights for the property in 1994, bringing Andrew Kevin Walker to write the script.
  • Robert Rodriguez offered to direct as well as Paul W.S. Anderson and both turned it down.
  • Glenn Danzig was invited by 20th Century Fox to audition for the role of Wolverine in 1995, as his height and build closely resemble that of the film’s protagonist, as described in the original comic books. However, he declined due to scheduling conflicts with his band
  • Michael Jackson actively campaigned for the role of Xavier but was never seriously considered by the studio.
  • Jim Caviezel was originally cast as Cyclops but backed out due to scheduling conflicts with Frequency.
  • Hugh Jackman took ice cold showers every morning of filming, in order to help get into character. This tradition started when jumping into the shower at 5 a.m., before realizing there was no hot water. Shocked awake, but not wanting to wake his sleeping wife, he gritted his teeth and bore it, before realizing that this mindset, wanting to scream and lash out at something, but having to hold it in, was the mentality that Wolverine is in constantly. He then made cold showers his Wolverine preparation routine for each movie featuring the character.
  • Shortly after accepting the role of Magneto, Sir Ian McKellen was offered the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, which, originally, he had to decline. He spoke to director Bryan Singer about his interest in making The Lord of the Rings, and Singer agreed to rearrange this movie’s shooting schedule so that McKellen would finish his scenes by the end of 1999, freeing him up to travel to New Zealand in January 2000, where The Lord of the Rings had been in production since October 1999.
  • Neither Sir Patrick Stewart nor Sir Ian McKellen knew how to play chess during filming. A chess master came in to teach them.
  • To celebrate her last day on-set, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos brought in a bottle of tequila, which she gave to her fellow cast and crew during a break in filming. Unfortunately, that day she happened to be filming the Wolverine and Mystique fight scene, and she threw up blue-colored vomit (from the chemicals in her make-up) all over Hugh Jackman.
  • In order to keep her look a secret, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos had to sit in an isolated, windowless room when not required for shooting: “I had almost no contact with the rest of the cast, it was like I was making a different movie from everyone else. It was hell.”
  • Sir Patrick Stewart was the first actor to be cast as a mutant, and in fact, had been a fan-favorite for the role of Professor X since the 1990s, specially after X-Men: The Animated Series (1992).
  • Hugh Jackman got his testicles caught in his harness after a six foot jump off the set’s Statue of Liberty.
  • Most of the eye effects were achieved by the actors and actresses wearing special contact lenses. The cast found these lenses uncomfortable and dangerous to wear. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos could only wear her Mystique lenses for one hour at a time, and had only ten percent vision. Tyler Mane kept his Sabretooth lenses in for too long, and ended up temporarily blinded for a day. Halle Berry wore her opaque white Storm lenses only once, found them unbearable, and insisted she have CGI for her eyes.
  • There were three types of Wolverine claws: plastic, rubber, and steel. More than seven hundred individual claw blades were used by Hugh Jackman and his four stunt doubles.
  • Many of the X-Men from the comics who don’t have major roles in this movie appear as minor characters in the school. Among them are Jubilee (the Asian-American girl wearing a yellow jacket, hoop earrings with sunglasses above her forehead); Shadowcat, also known as Kitty Pryde; Colossus; Iceman, a.k.a. Bobby Drake; and Pyro. Kitty, Iceman, and Pyro have major roles in the sequels, although Kitty and Pyro both change actors for later films.
  • Bryan Singer’s first choice to play Wolverine was Russell Crowe, but he turned it down. Other actors considered for the role were Mel Gibson, Aaron Eckhart, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Viggo Mortensen, Edward Norton, Bob Hoskins, Keanu Reeves and Gary Sinise. Dougray Scott was cast, but he had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with Mission: Impossible II (2000) and was injured in a motorbike accident. Finally, Crowe suggested his friend, Hugh Jackman, to Bryan Singer, who auditioned him and had him cast as Wolverine shortly after filming began. Even so, Jackman later stated that it took him a few weeks of filming to find the correct performance.
  • Bryan Singer turned down this movie three times, believing that comic books were unintelligent literature. However, after reading the X-Men comics, and watching X-Men: The Animated Series (1992), he found the story’s themes of prejudice and discrimination compelling, and finally agreed to do a live-action movie.
  • Hugh Jackman said that if he could have any of the mutants’ abilities, he would choose Mystique’s.
  • Rebecca Romijn-Stamos’s make-up process involved putting on one hundred ten self-adhesive prosthetics, developed specifically for the movie, followed by air-brushing the blue paint. The make-up team was reluctant to use food coloring for her make-up, because it is difficult to remove, but used it after discovering a new chemical that could very quickly and easily remove food coloring.
  • Ray Park’s first speaking role without another actor dubbing his voice.
  • Terence Stamp, David Hemblen, and Sir Christopher Lee were considered for the role of Magneto. Ultimately, Bryan Singer chose Sir Ian McKellen for the role, who had acted in Singer’s previous film Apt Pupil (1998), and as an activist for gay rights, understood the role well: “Ian responded to the allegory of mutants as outsiders, disenfranchised, and alone, and coming to all that at puberty, when their differences manifest.” Hemblen voiced the character in the animated X-Men (1992).
  • Bryan Singer watched all seventy-six episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series (1992) to decide which of the characters from the comics should be in the movie.
  • Wolverine doesn’t kill anyone in this movie.
  • Hugh Jackman did most of his own stunts. One day, he almost impaled a cameraman with his claws.

X2: Xmen United (2003)

• Directed by Bryan Singer
• Starring Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, James Mardsen Allen Cumming, and Anna Paquin.
• Box Office of 407 million on a 110-million-dollar budget
• Trivia
  • Singer wanted to study, “the human perspective, the kind of blind rage that feeds into warmongering and terrorism,” citing a need for a “human villain”. Bryan and producer Tom DeSanto envisioned X2 as the film series’ equivalent to The Empire Strikes Back, in that the characters are “all split apart, and then dissected, and revelations occur that are significant… the romance comes to fruition and a lot of things happen”.
  • Based off Chris Claremont’s graphic Novel Xmen: God Loves Man Kills
  • On The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992), Hugh Jackman related a story about something that happened during the filming of the Weapon X flashback scene: while he was filming the corridor run (in which he is nude and backlit), he turned the corner and saw the female cast members, and also James Marsden’s mother, waiting for him, hooting and waving dollar bills.
  • During filming, Hugh Jackman’s sister visited the set. As a joke, she was made-up in Jackman’s full Wolverine costume and make-up, and walked around the set. Apparently, she was very convincing as Jackman. Bryan Singer was not aware that it was not Jackman in the Wolverine costume, and commented of her work during shooting that “Hugh is acting very strangely today.”
  • Professor Xavier’s wheelchair from X-Men (2000) was bought by a lawyer who also worked for the same law firm as Sir Patrick Stewart’s attorney. When production began, the studio realized they had no chair anymore, so the lawyer rented it back to the studio, as Stewart said in an interview, “for a significant sum.”
  • Neil Patrick Harris auditioned for the role of Nightcrawler, but lost out to Alan Cumming, who speaks fluent German.
  • Unlike the first movie, where Rebecca Romijn-Stamos wore contact lenses, this time, Mystique’s eyes are rendered digitally.
  • Most of the exterior shots of the Xavier mansion were recycled from the first movie because there was no budget for them.
  • (at around 8 mins) When Jean is hearing people’s thoughts in the Science Museum, one of them is “To the shelter!” This line was said by one of the Secret Service agents during Nightcrawler’s attack on the Oval Office in the previous scene, thus adding and alluding to Jean’s growing psychic abilities. Other lines Jean hears are “No!” shouted by Wolverine when he later is separated from General Stryker by Iceman’s wall of ice and “They’re gonna kill him.”, which is what Rogue later says to Iceman and Pyro in the tunnel pleading for them to go back and help Wolverine.
  • The “Lady Deathstrike” claws were glued to the bottom of Kelly Hu’s own fingernails. She had to grow them out a bit so that the claws would fit securely.
  • agneto’s helmet was subtly redesigned from X-Men (2000), as Sir Ian McKellen found the original to be very uncomfortable.
  • Halle Berry dropped out of Gigli (2003) to reprise her role as Storm.
  • The illusion-casting powers that Mutant 143 (played by Michael Reid MacKay) possesses is an homage to a classic X-Men villain from the comics named Jason Wyngarde, a.k.a. Mastermind
  • Tyler Mane and Ray Park were originally set to return as Sabretooth and Toad, until it was felt that the script was already overloaded with too many mutants.
  • Hugh Jackman worked with the same trainer who trained Angelina Jolie for the title role in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).
  • The Sentinels were supposed to appear as part of Stryker’s attack on the school, and concept art of them was included in the movie’s DVD release.
  • Nick Fury was intended to be in the film but was scrapped due to licensing rights with Marvel.
  • Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler) left the franchise after one movie, because the crew believed it wasn’t worth going through the long preparation. This also includes the fact that Cumming did not enjoy putting on the heavy make-up, because his appearance was minimal. So, it was written in the video game series that Nightcrawler decided to leave, because he no longer wanted to live the violent lifestyle that X-Men have to endure.

Xmen: The Last Stand (2006)

• Director by Brett Ratner
  • Rush Hour Franchise
  • Red Dragon remake
  • Money Talks
• Starring Patrick Stewart, Kelsey Grammar, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, Elliot Page, Shawn Ashmore, and Aaron Stanford.
• Budget of 210 million and Box office of 460 million
• Trivia
  • Bryan Singer, the director of the first two 20th Century Fox X-Men films, left the project in July 2004 in favor of developing Superman Returns (2006) for Warner Bros. Pictures. Singer stated that he “didn’t fully have X-Men 3 in my mind” in contrast to a fully formed idea for a Superman film and interest in joining that franchise.
  • Rebecca Romijn’s (Mystique’s) and James Marsden’s (Cyclops’) roles were reduced substantially when this movie was rushed into production, and the two cast members had prior scheduling conflicts.
  • Kelsey Grammer was so keen to play Beast that he agreed to do an audition. This was the first time Grammer had auditioned in over twenty years.
  • The whirlwind wire-stunts performed by Halle Berry made her so nauseated that she vomited in one scene, and the crew had to bring in buckets for her before shooting her fight scenes.
  • Budgeted at $210 million, this was, at the time, the most expensive movie ever made.
  • When Bryan Singer was going to direct, he and his writers Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty wrote a treatment solely based on the X-Men storyline “The Dark Phoenix Saga”. The deceased Jean Grey returns, with a new, more destructive personality called The Phoenix. She would be manipulated into joining the Hellfire Club, by their telepathic leader Emma Frost (Sigourney Weaver was intended for the role). A three-way battle occurs between the Club, who want to take over the world, the X-Men, who want to save their comrade, and Magneto’s Brotherhood, who want the Phoenix for their own plans. At the end, to save everyone, Jean kills herself, but her spirit lives on and transcends into a divine being, which Dougherty compared to the star child in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
  • For her dual role as Jean Gray and the Phoenix, Famke Janssen extensively researched dissociative identity disorders and split personalities, to make her performance convincing.
  • Halle Berry had initially decided not to reprise her role as Storm for this movie, citing lack of character development in the previous two installments, and a tense relationship with Bryan Singer. However, after Singer’s departure, and suffering a major box-office flop with Catwoman (2004), Berry agreed to return, on the condition that her role be expanded. Consequently, in this movie, Storm replaces Cyclops and Professor Xavier as team leader of the X-Men (which is keeping with the comics, where for a time Storm served as team leader in Xavier’s absence).
  • The idea of a cure developed by Dr. Kavita Rao, Beast’s interest in it, and the prominent roles played by Kitty Pryde and Colossus, were inspired by Joss Whedon’s story “Gifted”, which took place in the first six issues of “Astonishing X-Men”. The mutant cure plot was first introduced in X-Men: The Animated Series (1992).
  • Gambit was going to appear in this movie, and would have been a love interest of Rogue, and a rival for Iceman, similar to how Kitty Pryde was Rogue’s rival for Iceman’s affections. However, Twentieth Century Fox was developing X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), and stipulated that no mutant could appear in both movies, and so Gambit was removed from the script. Channing Tatum was in the running for the role before it was removed.
  • The maneuver where Colossus grabs Wolverine and throws him at something (spinning around a few times to gain momentum) is known as the Fastball Special, and is an iconic move in the X-Men saga. The Fastball Special in this movie is based on John Cassaday’s “Amazing X-Men” #6.
  • Angel’s wings were initially too heavy for Ben Foster, and were remade from foam.
  • Matthew Vaughn was hired in March 2005. Vaughn cast Kelsey Grammer as Beast (Dr. Hank McCoy) and Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut (Cain Marko), and also conceptualized several scenes for the movie. He got no farther, however, because family issues forced him to drop out of filming. Vaughn was also cautious of Twentieth Century Fox wanting to rush production: “I didn’t have the time to make the movie I wanted to make. I had a vision for how it should be, and I wanted to make sure I was making a movie as good as X2: X-Men United (2003), and I knew there was no way that could be.” Vaughn’s ideas, and casting of Grammer and Jones stayed in the final movie though.
  • Cain Marko’s line “Don’t you know who I am? I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” was inspired by a popular web parody movie that made use of scenes from X-Men: The Animated Series (1992). Throughout the parody , the Juggernaut character repeatedly says, “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” According to wikipedia.com, Brett Ratner has a link to this parody on his own website. (Whether or not the parody was inspired by a misheard line from an old X-Men video game is irrelevant to this movie’s use of this line, since it’s clearly an homage to the web parody).
  • Bryan Singer dropped out to direct Superman Returns (2006). Ironically, Brett Ratner, who was considered for directing said film, replaced him to direct this movie
  • When Famke Janssen was first cast as Jean Grey in X-Men (2000), she was excited at the prospect of doing the Dark Phoenix storyline. She wasn’t happy about the way this was depicted in this movie.
  • Elliot Page is the only actor to portray Kitty Pryde, a.k.a. Shadowcat, in more than one movie in the franchise. In X-Men (2000), the role was played by Sumela Kay, and in X2: X-Men United (2003) by Katie Stuart. Elliot Page played the role in this movie and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
  • Alex Proyas point blank refused to even consider directing the movie after Bryan Singer dropped out, having had a difficult time making I, Robot (2004) for Twentieth Century Fox.
  • Halle Berry asked that Storm be able to fly in this film
  • “The Fast and the Furious” and “X-Men” film franchises have often released the same installments of a franchise in the same year. X2: X-Men United (2003) and 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) were released in 2003, this movie and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) were released in 2006, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and Fast & Furious (2009) were released in 2009, X-Men: First Class (2011) and Fast Five (2011) were released in 2011, and The Wolverine (2013) and Fast & Furious 6 (2013) were released in 2013. Furious 7 (2015) was set to be released in 2014, the same year as X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), however, it then was pushed to 2015 after Paul Walker’s death.
  • Eliza Dushku auditioned for the part of Kitty Pryde before Elliot Page was cast.
  • The last scene was to have Magneto regaining his abilities as he plays chess with a stranger (whom he discovers is Professor Xavier in another man’s body). Neither were available for filming their scene together, so instead, two separate scenes for the two were filmed, bookending the credits
  • The last scenes of Magneto and Professor X (Magneto discovers the return of his powers, Professor X reveals his survival) were not in the script, and were secretly filmed. Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart admitted even they didn’t know whether their scenes would be in the final cut or not.
  • Anna Paquin and producer Lauren Shuler Donner were amongst the participants in this movie who were not happy about the idea of Rogue taking the mutant “cure”
  • Twentieth Century Fox originally intended this to be the final X-Men movie featuring any of the original cast, forming a trilogy, somewhat akin to the Star Wars film franchise, with possible spin-offs based on individual characters from the franchise, beginning with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). Late in post-production, the studio reversed this intent, and Brett Ratner re-edited and re-shot scenes to make this movie more open-ended. After mixed critical and box-office reception for X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), and troubled development of a Magneto origin movie, Twentieth Century Fox made several unsuccessful attempts at developing a fourth movie, before deciding to reboot the franchise with X-Men: First Class (2011), and later, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), which used time travel to eliminate inconvenient elements of past continuity.
  • Colossus was intended to have a much larger presence (including a fight scene with both Juggernaut and Magneto, who throws Colossus away when he armors up). Almost the entirety of his role is deleted, and he appears mostly as a background role for the entirety of the movie with only one line of dialogue. The idea of having Colossus fighting Juggernaut was finally used in Deadpool 2 (2018).
  • The death of Cyclops (James Marsden) was based on Marsden’s availability (he had decided to film Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns (2006)). The studio considered killing him off-screen with a dialogue reference, but Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn insisted that Jean be seen killing him, to emphasize their relationship.
  • An early draft of the script leaked onto the Internet in June 2005 during Matthew Vaughn’s brief tenure as director. The script contained notable deleted scenes and characters, including a sequence in which Rogue and Beast break into Worthington Labs to further research the “cure” serum, lifted directly from Joss Whedon’s “Gifted” storyline, and a sexual relationship between Storm and Wolverine. This draft also included the character of Cecilia Reyes, a mutant scientist and rival of Dr. Kavita Rao. Somewhat ironically, Shohreh Aghdashloo was originally cast as Reyes before the character was eliminated, and the actress re-cast as Rao instead. This version of the script also sparked the controversy surrounding the reduced screentime of Cyclops, Mystique, and Professor X. In order to combat negative buzz surrounding the movie, Brett Ratner ordered several major changes in editing, and shot several new scenes to leave the movie more open-ended, allowing potential for future sequels. Originally, Cyclops was to die on-screen, murdered by Jean Grey, Professor X’s death was meant to be definitive, as was the loss of Mystique’s powers. Ratner re-edited Cyclops’ scene to only imply his death, leaving the potential for the character to return in future sequels, and added the after-credits coda of Moira MacTaggart discovering Xavier’s mind transferred to a different body. Also scripted, but not shot, were scenes of Jean Grey’s gravesite exploding in a fireball, implying her resurrection, and a scene of Mystique playing chess with Magneto, where she offers him a drug that will restore his powers.
  • The final scene with the chess piece moving is identical to the ending of Christine (1983) with part of the compressed car moving.

X-men: First Class (2011)

• Directed by Matthew Vaughn
  • Kick Ass
• Story by Bryan Singer
• Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Bryne Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon.
• Budget 160 million making 352 million at box office
• Trivia
  • During the production of X2, producer Lauren Shuler Donner had discussed the idea of a film focusing on the young X-Men with the crew, which was met with approval; the concept was revived during the production of X-Men: The Last Stand. One of The Last Stand’s writers, Zak Penn, was hired to write and direct this spin-off, but this idea later fell through. Penn explained in 2007 that “the original idea was to have me do a young X-Men spin-off, a spin-off of the young X-Men characters. But someone came up with a pretty interesting idea … it was this guy who worked with me named Mike Chamoy, he worked a lot with me on X3. He came up with how to do a young X-Men movie which is not what you’d expect.
  • To prepare for his role as Charles Xavier, James McAvoy shaved his head. He soon learned that the filmmakers wanted Xavier to have a full head of hair in the prequel. Throughout the first month of filming McAvoy had to wear hair extensions. He finally shaved his head for X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).
  • Stan Lee does not make a cameo in this film. He was unable to participate because “they shot it too far away.”
  • The filmmakers had only two choices for the role of Sebastian Shaw: Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon. They decided to go with Bacon as he was American and seemed more menacing than Firth. Matthew Vaughn would later cast Firth in another comic-book based film, Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and its sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
  • The film was originally to be a prequel about Magneto. Screenwriter Sheldon Turner wrote a treatment which he described as “X-Men (2000) meets The Pianist (2002)”: the story focused on Magneto’s early years as a prisoner of war in a Nazi concentration camp, until liberation by a squad of Allied Forces led by Charles Xavier. They later meet after the war and become friends, and later become rivals. The studio decided to change the film’s direction to the early years of the X-Men, but incorporated aspects of Turner’s script into the film
  • To prepare for his role as Erik Lensherr, Michael Fassbender studied Sir Ian McKellen’s performance as Lensherr in the previous X-Men films, but also looked through the comics, as he decided to make his own version of Magneto: “You want to respect what someone else has done, especially because the fan base really liked what Ian has done with it. But, while I could have gone and studied him as a young man and brought that to the performance, I don’t think (Director) Matthew [Vaughn] is very interested in that. So I’m just going my own way and working with whatever is in the comic books and the script.”
  • Caleb Landry Jones auditioned for the film without knowing what X-Men character he was up for, saying he auditioned because it was the film that fit his biotype: “I’ve got red hair and freckles, I’m not gonna be Batman, Robin or Spider-Man.”
  • Kevin Bacon said in interviews that he took the part of Sebastian Shaw because he strongly believed in the ideas that the comics represented
  • Bryan Cranston turned down the role of Sebastian Shaw to be in Drive (2011).
  • The set for Xavier’s mansion was also used in the television series Hex (2004), which also starred Michael Fassbender, who played a character named “Azazeal,” which is much like the teleporting mutant named “Azazel.”
  • Matthew Vaughn was originally hired to direct X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), but left citing pressure from the studio to finish the film within too short a time. He was approached again for this movie, and accepted, being an X-Men fan with a desire to direct an X-men movie, even though it meant he had even less time to finish the movie than with X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).
  • Taylor Lautner was considered to play Hank McCoy a.k.a. Beast, but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Nicholas Hoult was later cast.
  • Beast’s fur was made from the hairs of an Arctic Fox.
  • Lucas Till was originally cast as Beast, but decided not to because of the amount of time for makeup, but was later cast as Havok instead.
  • Edward Furlong was considered to play Charles Xavier before James McAvoy was cast.
  • This is the first X-Men movie to feature an F word.
  • (at around 48 mins) With Hugh Jackman’s brief cameo as Wolverine, he is now the first actor to play the same comic book superhero in five different movies (and four more times after this one, excluding Deadpool 2 (2018) which is just archive footage of him from X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)).
  • Hugh Jackman accepted the opportunity to cameo as Wolverine, when he learned he would be the only character in the film to use the word ‘fuck’. He improvised the line, “Go fuck yourself,” after using seven other takes to say, “Fuck off”. The reaction from James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender to the different line was authentic.
  • A telepathic battle between Professor X and Emma Frost was going to be in the film, but upon the release of Inception (2010) the concept was scrapped. This was then used in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), between Professor X and Apocalypse.
  • Riptide (Alex Gonzalez) is never identified by name throughout the entire film. Neither his real name nor his alias is ever spoken or written anywhere until the end credits. Oddly this anonymity even carries on to the next film. In the sequel , all the missing mutants are acknowledged to have died in the interim between the Cuba incident and the Paris treaty, either via dialogue or pictures. Riptide however is never mentioned anywhere in Days of Future Past. It can be inferred though that he also died during the time lapse.

Xmen: Days of Future Past (2014)

• Directed by Bryan Singer
• Story by Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, and Simon Kinberg
• Starring Ian Mckellan , Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Elliot Page, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Halle Berry, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, and Nicholas Hoult.
• Budget of 200 million and Box office of 746 million
• Trivia
  • 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released an alternate version of the film, titled The Rogue Cut, on July 14, 2015. It added 17 minutes of previously unused footage, including a subplot involving Anna Paquin’s character Rogue, whose role was reduced to a brief cameo in the theatrical release. The Rogue Cut was also screened at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con International.

• In the Rogue Cut, Rogue’s role is more consequential, and the narrative is more complex: when Kitty Pryde is accidentally wounded after Wolverine’s consciousness experiences a phase between past and future from seeing Stryker in 1973, Bobby Drake (Iceman) proposes breaking into the heavily guarded remains of Cerebro at the former X-Mansion, the one place where Xavier’s mind cannot reach others from the outside, in order to rescue Rogue, who is being held captive there. Xavier, Magneto, and Iceman succeed in rescuing Rogue, but at the cost of Iceman’s life. Rogue uses her power to take over for Kitty in regards to keeping Wolverine’s mind in 1973, for the remaining time until the moment history is changed, with a suggestion that Wolverine is aware of the switch as he appears to feel Rogue’s presence. The Sentinels are able to find the X-Men through a tracking device inside a Sentinel’s hand that was severed from the X-Jet during their escape. In another major scene, Mystique stops at the X-Mansion the night before the Sentinel-unveiling ceremony, revisits her previous romance with Beast, and destroys Cerebro the following morning in order to prevent Xavier from finding her. A new mid-credits scene shows Bolivar Trask imprisoned at Magneto’s former prison cell beneath the Pentagon for selling military secrets to foreign countries.
• The script called for Logan to wake up in 1973 in boxer shorts. Hugh Jackman vetoed this, in favor of waking nude, saying, “In Australia, if you’re next to a really good-looking girl, you’re not getting out with boxer shorts on, or briefs, or anything!”
• Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen were performing in a touring production of “Waiting for Godot” when Bryan Singer approached the actors about reprising their respective roles as Professor X and Magneto. According to McKellen, both men were utterly shocked, as they thought they had passed their roles on to James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, and would never play the characters again. Stewart and McKellen were delighted to return to two of their most popular roles, and to work with the younger actors playing the same characters as well.
• According to Peter Dinklage, Bryan Singer picked him to play Bolivar Trask because of his height, stating, “With my Dwarfism, I’m a bit of a mutant. I can’t move metal or anything, but I thought of it as self-loathing. Deep down, Trask is quite sensitive about that aspect of himself.”
• The filmmakers selected the “Days of Future Past” storyline because it would allow the filmmakers to reconcile any continuity dissonances within the X-Men film franchise. The time-travel element also allowed actors and actresses from the first three movies, and X-Men: First Class (2011), to appear in the same movie together
• Bishop is the first mutant Kitty Pryde sends through time. This is an homage to Bishop being a frequent time-traveller in the X-Men comics.
• Sir Patrick Stewart enjoyed James McAvoy’s light-hearted performance as Charles Xavier in X-Men: First Class (2011), and had wanted to try a similar performance with Xavier, instead of keeping him grave and sober. He got his wish with this movie: in the altered future, his Xavier is just a bit jollier.
• Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen had make-up applied to look twenty years older than their actual ages. They had previously had digital make-up applied to look twenty years younger in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).
• Originally, Josh Helman was going to be cast as a young Cain Marko, a.k.a. Juggernaut. But Juggernaut was written out of the movie, and Helman was offered the role of a young William Stryker.
• This the first X-Men movie ever to be nominated for an Oscar (Best Visual Effects)
• Halle Berry’s role as Storm had to be substantially reduced, due to her pregnancy.
• Bryan Singer based the time travel in the movie on string theory: “Until an object is observed, it hasn’t really happened yet. The time-traveller, whose consciousness travels through time, I call The Observer, and until the Observer returns to where he travelled from, the result hasn’t occurred yet. So he can muck about in the past, and it isn’t until he snaps back that the new future is set. As a result, we have parallel action, and there’s underlying tension, because there’s always that threat Wolverine’s consciousness could return to the future, and leave the world in an even darker place.”
• In the “Days of Future Past” comic, it was Kitty Pryde who went back in time. In the animated series two-part episode of the same name, it was Bishop, who in this movie, Kitty sends back first, and finally Wolverine. According to writer Simon Kinberg, Kitty was intended to be the time-traveller, but it didn’t work out: “Kitty in the era of young Magneto and Xavier would have been -20 years old. The reflex response to that was a character who doesn’t age. Wolverine is the only character who would look the same in 1973 as he does in the future.” Thus, Wolverine was picked for being an ageless immortal character who would bridge past and future.
• Originally, the prison break scene was conceived with Juggernaut in mind. He was meant to be a football player at the X-Mansion. However, he was replaced with Quicksilver, whose power seemed more stylish and smooth.
• Stan Lee was offered a cameo, but opted out, so he could attend Fan Expo Canada in Toronto.
• A romantic subplot between Storm and Wolverine in the future was filmed, but cut for runtime purposes.
• Evan Peters plays the role of Quicksilver in X-Men and his Kick-Ass (2010) co-star, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, played the character Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015).
• Rogue, in the Extended Cut, only has four lines.
• Wolverine wakes up in 1973, and learns that his claws are bone, not metal, and that he does not remember sleeping with the young woman with whom he is in bed. In X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), which took place six years after this movie, Wolverine gained metal claws made from Adamantium, replacing his bone claws, and suffered permanent amnesia when being shot in the head by William Stryker.
• The cameos of Cyclops (James Marsden) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) were so tightly guarded that the actors, as well as director Bryan Singer, outright lied about their appearance in the movie to keep their return a surprise. Both characters had been killed off in X3, as well as Professor Xavier (Sir Patrick Stewart) – events that the circumstances of this film would have erased/rewritten.
• Kelsey Grammer wanted to return as the elder Beast in a substantial role, but due to scheduling conflicts with Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), he was unable. His cameo was added during re-shoots, to keep it secret.
• In the original cut, when Wolverine injures Kitty Pride after encountering Stryker, Kitty was to bleed to the point she could no longer hold Wolverine in the past. Iceman would reveal that Rogue, long thought dead by Xavier, was actually being held in the one place he could never telepathically locate her: Cerebro. To ensure Wolverine can complete his mission, Iceman, Magneto, and Professor X return to the X Mansion, which has been taken over by Trask Industries, to rescue Rogue, so that she can absorb Kitty’s powers. Iceman was to die in the rescue, and the X-Jet has to fight off several Sentinels in order to escape. These scenes also explained more clearly how the Sentinels were able to track the remaining X-Men. A part of one of the Sentinels remained on the jet, enabling the others to follow the jet back to China, leading to the final battle at the monastery. Portions of this sequence appear in trailers, and these scenes were fully restored in the Extended Edition (Rogue Cut).
• In her cameo, Rogue is seen wearing her trademark green jacket and pants from the comic books.
• In Logan (2017) which takes place in 2029, Charles Xavier mentions the battle on Liberty Island that occurred in X-Men (2000). Since X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) is set in a new time line, which is established when Logan traveled back through time to 1973 and changed history, and Logan wakes up in alternate 2023, it is likely Logan and Charles Xavier’s deaths occur six years after Logan wakes up in the School of the Gifted in alternate 2023.

X:men Apocalypse (2016)

• Directed by Bryan Singer
• Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Houlot, Sophie Turner, Rose Bryrne, Olivia Munn, and Luis Till
• Budget of 178 million and Box office of 543 million
• Trivia
  • Although not in the movie, Sir Patrick Stewart jokingly informed Bryan Singer that he would be willing to play Mystique, should Jennifer Lawrence “start playing up.” He said: “I am so ready to be naked, painted blue, and the world is ready for it too.”
  • In the comics, Mystique is the mother of Nightcrawler, and was forced to abandon him, though this is never acknowledged or hinted at in either this film or X2: X-Men United (2003). However, in an outtake, Jennifer Lawrence ad-libbed a line acknowledging Nightcrawler as her son by Azazel; this take is shown in the gag reel
  • Particularly with Psylocke, Nightcrawler, and Cyclops, the outfits and characters’ looks were designed to pay homage to their comic book counterparts, differently from past films when the X-Men used standard black leather uniforms. Cyclops’ costume is taken from Jim Lee’s blue and yellow design in the 90s.
  • The film was to be subtitled “Age of Apocalypse” after the comic of the same name, but this was changed to “Apocalypse” for a more ominous title, as well as to avoid comparison with Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), and The Age of Adaline (2015).
  • Tom Hardy and Idris Elba were both considered for the role of Apocalypse, but that part went to Oscar Isaac instead
  • Originally, Apocalypse was to be a space entity, as in the comics, but Bryan Singer found the religious aspect of the character more interesting, and removed the space element from the film
  • Other members of the Four Horsemen in the comic, who are not members of the faction in this movie, are Wolverine and Caliban.
  • Oscar Isaac had to dub almost all of his dialogue as Apocalypse as sounds of his bulky rubber costume moving were being picked up by the microphones.
  • At 144 minutes, this is the longest X-Men film to date.
  • Oscar Isaac told The New York Times in a 2022 interview that he doesn’t disown the movie saying that “No, I don’t disown it, I know exactly what I went in there wanting to do and the reasons why. There were these amazing actors involved that I really wanted to work with, [James] McAvoy and [Michael] Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence. I collected X-Men growing up, and I loved Apocalypse, I just found him such a freaky, weird character.” “And then you get there and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got all these prosthetics on. I’ve got a suit on. I can’t move. I can’t see anybody. All these actors I wanted to work with – I can’t even see who they are.’ I still think back to that time with fondness. I wish it would have been a better film and that they would have taken care of the character a little better, but those are the risks.”
  • Ally Sheedy: (at around 8 mins) the teacher at the school where Scott’s powers manifest
  • According to Simon Kinberg, this is the final film in the First Class story arc, which also consisted of X-Men: First Class (2011) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). Kinberg calls this film the culmination of Xavier and Lensherr’s relationship. “First Class was about Erik becoming empowered, the origin story of a man’s power. Days of Future Past was about Charles becoming empowered, a guy who is a mess, but masterminds the end of a massive event. This film has them both at their peak, and finally going at each other!”
  • The film redoes the events of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009):
    • Blob makes an appearance as a fighter.
    • William Stryker creates Weapon X.
    • Wolverine gets his adamantium claws and escapes being trapped as Weapon X.
  • Magneto has a wife and daughter, named Magda and Nina, who are killed by a soldier. This was taken from the X-Men comics. However, Nina was named Anya, and she was the first child Erik ever had. While in the films, Magneto has already had Peter Maximoff (and twin).
  • Professor X offers Magneto a chance to stay at the school, which he declines. In the comics, Magneto accepted this offer and became a mentor to the New Mutants, and The New Mutants (2020) is the next X-Men movie planned after this one.
  • There are strong rumors that there is actually an alternative version of the film called the “Wolverine Cut” where Wolverine played by Hugh Jackman has the most appearance in the film. Since his first appearance as Weapon X escaping and killing Stryker’s soldiers and ending up joining the X-Men wearing also the black suit. Since it had been announced that in full post production the other actors were called again to make other recordings with Jackman as Wolverine having more relevance in the film from its appearance as Weapon X to the final scene where Logan and Professor Xavier of the Chamber of Danger with the simulation of the sentinels. But for some reason it was never launched.

Xmen Dark Phoenix (2018)

• Directed and Written by Simon Kniberg
• Budget of 200 million and Box office of 252 million